Government of Canada Tender Notice: Social Media Monitoring

This tender is just for monitoring publicly-available stuff on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.

Every big brand already does that. For example, Starbucks almost certainly has software watching for mentions of the word "Starbucks." They probably have people to respond to questions on Twitter, etc. It's known as "Social Media Monitoring."

One of the big companies offering a Social Media Monitoring suite is Radian6; they're now part of Salesforce.com. There are lots of other companies offering similar services.

The Canadian Government wants to pay closer attention to what people are saying publicly online? I have a hard time finding problems with that. (Eavesdropping on private communications without a warrant is another matter entirely; it's not what this tender is for.)